Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

Cliff notes

Don't expect any action on the "fiscal cliff" until New Year's eve. Thumb-twiddling scheduled to end 12/31/12, but no solution promised.

Congressional leaders and the White House are taking a holiday break
in negotiations over how to avoid year-end spending cuts and tax
increases, and may not take up the issue in earnest again until just
before New Year's Eve.

There have been no talks between party leaders or between the White House and GOP officials since Friday, when President Barack Obama
and Congress left town for Christmas, officials close to the
negotiations say. That dims the prospect that any backup plan for
averting the fiscal cliff could be devised and moved through the Senate
when it reconvenes Thursday, as some expected. ...WSJ

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Aw, jeez! Nobody seems to agree with anybody else about how close the cliff is? Huh? Evan Soltas at WaPo's Wonkblog rounds up a summary of opinions about the resuming talks. An excerpt:

Obama may be heading back to Washington to restart fiscal-cliff negotiations.
“[B]oth chambers of Congress will come back from their holiday hiatus
on Thursday and return to work. While there are growing signs that some
members of both parties are prepared to accept a deal that raises taxes
on people at the highest income levels, there is considerable distance
between Republicans and Democrats and no guarantee that an agreement
could pass.” Jeremy W. Peters in The New York Times.

@Goldfarb: A White House official says Obama plans to leave Hawaii as soon as Wednesday — to return to fiscal cliff negotiations.

From ‘fiscal cliff’ to ‘fiscal horizon.’ “Some hits —
like a two percentage point increase in payroll taxes and the end of
unemployment benefits for more than two million jobless Americans —
would be felt right away. But other effects, like tens of billions in
automatic spending cuts, to include both military and other programs,
would be spread out between now and the end of the 2013 fiscal year in
September. These could quickly be reversed if a compromise is found…In
the meantime, more observers are contemplating what the impact will be
if Washington ignores the year-end deadline and waits until January or
February to act.” Nelson D. Schwartz in The New York Times.